Shoppers Are Downloading More Mobile Retail Apps

Overall, mcommerce is rapidly growing

Consumers are steadily downloading more retail apps to their device compared to a year prior, research found. Indeed, nearly a quarter of respondents said they have between six and 10 retail apps on their smartphone as of April 2016, up 3 percentage points from October 2015.

According to research from comScore Custom Survey, the number of retail apps that US smartphone owners had on their device in April 2016 was slightly up compared to six months earlier. For example, in October 2015, 21% of smartphone owners had a handful of mobile retail apps—three to five—on their device. In April 2016, 23% had that many.

In addition, in October 2015, 33% of respondents said they had more than six apps on their smartphone. The following April, that figure had risen to 37%.

Generally, mcommerce is rapidly growing, thanks in large part to smartphones. eMarketer estimates US retail mcommerce sales will reach $123.13 billion in 2016, a 39.1% increase over 2015 and more than double the amount in 2014. As a result of this rapid growth, mcommerce will account for just under one-third of retail ecommerce sales and 2.6% of total retail this year.

The bulk of this growth is happening on smartphones. Smartphone retail mcommerce in the US nearly doubled in 2015 to $39.40 billion, a 95.8% year-over-year increase. Although the growth rate will slow down to 49.9% this year, absolute growth will be roughly the same: nearly $20 billion in additional sales.